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Women preferred sciences at the turn of the century As elsewhere in Europe and in the United States, Dutch women gained access to a university education in the second half of the nineteenth century. The initial slow increase in the numbers of female students during the last ... read more century accelerated during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The growth in numbers of the studying women went hand in hand with a marked shift in their preferences. Whereas during the first period most of them chose the medical or natural (mainly pharmaceutical) sciences as the subject of their studies, the arts became increasingly popular among the female students during the first decades of this century. I point at the rise and the subsequent decline of feminist activities, to the employment opportunities for academic women and to changes in the social climate as important factors contributing to the shift in their preferences. In the second part of the article I discuss in some detail the career development of three distinguished female scientists of the first generation who acquired academic positions at Dutch universities: biologist Johanna Westerdijk, the first female professor in the Netherlands, eugenicist Marianne van Herwerden en geneticist Jantina Tammes. A comparison of their professional lives points at the specific factors facilitating or impeding the institutional recognition and reward, in the form of a professorate, of their scientific achievements. show less